Having once been called the tech Hemingway of Paris, named one of the top 100 women in technology in Europe in 2012, short-listed for best tech journalist by the TechCrunch Europas, I like to fix problems with my own special brand of strategy, storytelling and writing. As a former assistant press secretary to a US Senator, DOE spokesperson, frequent speaker and host of a few of Europe's leading tech and mobile conferences, I've been on all sides of story telling, comms in all its forms. Georgia girl living in London with my beagle Henry. Come follow me on Twitter @jennalee or Google + under Jennifer Kite-Powell.

Qualcomm Toq, A Smarter Smart Watch

Qualcomm Toq is not new. It hit the market in November 2013 in the US, but there’s something smarter about the newest entrant to the smart watch and wearable field than meets the eye.

This quantified self thing has possibly made us more aware of ourselves. We are living, and will continue to live in a hive mind mentality, but the idea that you can re-connect with yourself through a watch is something new.

Seeing attendees at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last week slide back their shirt sleeves to reveal a Fitbit device, a Qualcomm Ventures investment, and proudly reveal their step count for the day, says something about the awareness of self and the devices we’re willing to don to help us do that.

Sure, you know if you worked out that day without a Fitbit or smart watch. And yes, you know what time it is via your smart phone in your pocket, but what’s happened to us now, after all the group think of social media, is we’re right back to the one thing we can’t escape, ourselves.

Qualcomm’s Toq, in living color

Think about the move from black and white TV to full color TV. Oh what a difference color makes and that’s one way the Qualcomm Toq is different. Toq does a lot of the same things other smart watches do — monitor your fitness, texting, notifications, social feeds, etc., but this smart watch’s touch screen is in full color and always on so you don’t have hit that button again to get it to light up. Swipe right or left to get where you want to go.

Pair with the Android app and your choices are endless, customizable from the inside and wireless charging makes it simple to keep charged up.

The other thing that makes Qualcomm Toq different is the style. Ok, yes most smart watches are clunky, ugly time pieces that clearly don’t have any female qualities and by that I mean, a watch a woman would wear. But the Toq inches towards both sexes, it could go either way. Unlike the Pebble watch which still looks like a man’s watch, the Toq isn’t customizable in a rainbow of lollipop colors and bands, but the time piece has a variety of arty color screens in varying patterns rather just a black and white ink e-reader.

And, to take a deeper look into psychology of consumer behavior, the Qualcomm Toq is a watch that a woman would wear. Show a woman the Sony Smart Watch and she will probably shake her head. Show her Toq, with its color screen and black or white band, and she’s more likely to buy it.

Just to prove the point, recent reports about women’s purchasing power showed that women are responsible for around $7 trillion in consumer and business spending in the United States alone. And since women hold the purchasing purse strings on more than 50% of what’s considered traditional male products like automobiles and consumer electronics, it’s a smart move by Qualcomm to design a smart watch a woman would buy and wear. In the next decade, women will control two thirds of all consumer wealth.

So, gaze down upon your wrist with the Qualcomm Toq – see time in color, know what’s incoming and what’s happening in your life. But more importantly, know you have the power to customize the inner workings of the Toq just for you, not the outside of the watch for the world to see, but the inside of the watch.

You have mapped that watch to who you are, and that’s why the Qualcomm Smart Watch is smarter. It’s about what’s on the inside that counts.

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Per your “You have mapped that watch to who you are, and that’s why the Qualcomm Smart Watch is smarter. It’s about what’s on the inside that counts,” we are hoping that someone in Qualcomm marketing who is involved with TOQ will one day see a match with our unique TrueTyme Sun/Moon/Self smartphone and smartwatch app, which already runs on the Sony smartwatches, but would look even better on TOQ displays. So perhaps you might be a match-maker if you like what you will find on TrueTyme.org, and then perhaps send someone at Qualcomm our way!

We have added this page to our TrueTyme.org site to address the fact that while pushing smartwatches is still an up-hill activity for smartwatch manufacturers, it is just a matter of time before the right smartwatch app/right color display comes togethet to create a killer combo. And here is more about how we think might might happen… http://truetyme.org/and-finally-for-all-you-fashionistas-and-early-adopters